Balotelli scored one of his typical goals. He is one of the few players who can score a goal out of the blue. Not a particularly brilliant game up to now. Saudi Arabia are extremely poor.
Belotti didn't have a good game imo, positano is rubbish from tonights performance, i would of kept insigne on and put cheisa on the right. midfield was mediocre, zappacosta shocking, Romagnoli is solid at the back and balotelli is our star man upfront no questions about it, can't wait until the france game, that will be a real test
I think they need to give these guys time against teams like Saudi. I expect that the lineup looks much different against a real team like France. Belotti has been mostly injured, so getting a scrappy rebound goal is good enough at this point. Balotelli did well enough too.
They controlled the whole match. Saudi was hardly a threat. Creating was not the problem. There were plenty of opportunities, just the finishing was not great. Cut them some slack. With just a little better finishing it could easily have ended 4-0, but then people would say it's not that great a feat like when they beat Liechtenstein 5-0 or Malta 8-0 or Uruguay 3-0 in June. No one rates those, but this one is a disaster because it was not like those? That makes little sense to me.
Not tap in easy, but the opportunities were there and were rushed. Saudi Arabia was pretty much irrelevant for almost the entire match, not that I would expect more from them. For a first game with a new team, the result being a win is what you want. I expect a much more conservative game tomorrow against France.